On useless efforts

 

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. A leaky faucet is not the end of the world, but is it a useless effort to try to get someone to fix it? I mean, our lives are filled with useless objects, projects we will never complete, and endeavors that have no future. We hang on to books we will never read, make promises that we can never keep, and make lists of tasks that we hope to one day complete. I have made shopping lists for the grocery store that never made it off the kitchen table. I bought pop tarts and Oreos and forgot to buy the fruits and vegetables I promised myself I would eat. I get existential angst from trying to find something in my junk drawer, which is full of useless stuff, which includes twist-ties, random keys, extra parts from assembling the entertainment center, an old watch which is only correct twice a day, several charger cables, a couple of dead cell phones that should be in museums, out-of-date coupons, several pencils of varying sizes--all with the tips broken, a magnifying glass, a couple of nails, a calculator, stamps, a Canadian nickle, various in-sundry batteries, bad paperclips, and plastic sandwich bags. I am probably saving all of these things for some unknown moment in the future when I might need something. When I finally find a small plastic case of those little strips of white corrective paper for typing over mistakes while typing, I know I have reached the top of the list of useless objects. Nobody has typewriters anymore, but I still have the corrective strips for making corrections. Cards of all classes and types--no explanation is either necessary or wanted. So the faucet continues to drip, the work order is being ignored by the plumbers, and the drought continues.